Get ’em inside and keep ’em here by any means they don’t find objectionable.
The people behind this institution would fall in with the Honored Matres and not blink an eye.
Teg put his drink aside and called out: “May I have your attention, please?”
Silence.
Even the waiting staff stopped in what they were doing.
“Some of you guard the doors,” Teg said. “No one goes in or out until I give the order. Those back doors, too, if you please.”
When this had been sorted out, he stared carefully around the room, picking the ones his doubled vision and old military experience told him could be most trusted. What he had to do now had become quite plain to him. Burzmali, Lucilla, and Duncan were out there at the edge of his new vision, their needs easily seen.
“I presume you can get your hands on weapons rather quickly,” he said.
“We came prepared, Bashar!” Someone out in the room shouted. Teg heard the drink in that voice but also the old adrenaline pumping that would be so dear to these people.
“We are going to capture a no-ship,” Teg said.
That grabbed them. No other artifact of civilization was as closely guarded. These ships came to the landing fields and other places and they left. Their armored surfaces bristled with weapons. Crews were on constant alert in vulnerable locations. Trickery might succeed; open assault stood little chance. But here in this room Teg had reached a new awareness, driven by necessity and the wild genes in his Atreides ancestry. The positions of the no-ships on and around Gammu were visible to him. Bright dots occupied his inner vision and, like threads leading from one bauble to another, his doubled vision saw the way through this maze.
Oh, but I do not want to go, he thought.
The thing driving him would not be denied.
“Specifically, we are going to capture a no-ship from the Scattering,” he said. “They have some of the best. You, you and you and you.” He pointed, singling out individuals. “You will stay here and see that no one leaves or communicates with anyone outside of this establishment. I think you will be attacked. Hold out as long as you can. The rest of you, get your weapons and let’s go.”
Justice? Who asks for justice. We make our own justice. We make it here on Arrakis — win or die. Let us not rail about justice as long as we have arms and the freedom to use them.
-Leto I: Bene Gesserit Archives
The no-ship came in low over the Rakian sands. Its passage stirred up dusty whirlwinds that drifted around it as it settled in a crunching disturbance of the dunes. The silvered yellow sun was sinking into a horizon disturbed by the heat devils of a long hot day. The no-ship sat there creaking, a glistening steely ball whose presence could be detected by the eyes and ears but not by any prescient or long-range instrument. Teg’s doubled vision made him confident that no unwanted eyes saw his arrival.
“I want the armored ‘thopters and cars out there in no more than ten minutes,” he said.
People stirred into action behind him.
“Are you certain they’re here, Bashar?” The voice was that of a drinking companion from the Gammu bar, a trusted officer from Renditai whose mood no longer was that of someone recapturing the thrills of his youth. This one had seen old friends die in the battle on Gammu. As with most of the others who survived to come here, he had left a family whose fate he did not know. There was a touch of bitterness in his voice, as though he were trying to convince himself that he had been tricked into this venture.
“They will be here soon,” Teg said. “They will arrive riding on the back of a worm.”
“How do you know that?”
“It was all arranged.”
Teg closed his eyes. He did not need eyes to see the activity all around him. This was like so many command posts he had occupied: an oval room of instruments and people who operated them, officers waiting to obey.